A Step Back - Plainchant and Hildegard of Bingen

I feel like I jumped the gun with the Carmina Burana post.  Also, let me be clear, when I say this blog is about the evolution of music I'm really talking about Western Classical Music with maybe a little jazz and pop thrown in later. Music has been around a Looong time and I am not qualified to talk in a scholarly way about, well, any of it. But I am qualified to give my impressions and to recommend enthusiastically when I hear something that moves or intrigues me. 

Skip over next paragraph if you know what monophony is.

The reason musical notation was invented is so the liturgical plainchants of the Catholic church, also called Gregorian chants, could be accurately taught without having to depend on an oral tradition that was susceptible to error. It helped formalize the mass throughout the Church. Here's an example. As you can hear it's a free, one line melody without a discernible pulse, or, in other words, it's monophonic. The music in Carmina Burana is also monophonic but sometimes with a rhythmic instrumental addition, but the rhythm is not notated. So, to start our exploration of western classical music we must start with monophony. 

Side note - There was all kinds of rhythmic music being performed at this time. For an interesting talk on the history of rhythm listen to this. 

A little music theory - All the music from this time period is monophonic (see above). The invention of staffed music (thank you Guido of Arezzo) enabled music to be performed polyphonically. In other words, two or more melodic lines could be sung (or played) simultaneously. That's a HUGE development in the evolution of western music but we're not there yet (won't be too long).

Now, on to Hildegard von Bingen. Her music, like the Gregorian chants, is monophonic. Frankly, while I enjoy dipping into this, I find that my desire to keep listening wanes rather quickly. But, it helps when it's sung as beautifully as it is by the Sequentia Ensemble; here on Spotify, here on YouTube. Track one, O Vis Eternitatis, is especially haunting, due to its being in the Phrygian mode. Besides being a composer, she was also a mystic and a polymath. Reading about her while listening to her music is a pleasant way to pass the time! 

A little more music theory - The musical alphabet is A,B,C,D,E,F,G then starting over at A. If you picture a piano keyboard (just the white keys) a scale from C to C is a major scale, a scale from A to A is a minor scale. Those two scales (major and minor) are the most used in modern day pop music, but there are 5 more notes you can start from! For example, one can go from E to E, and that produces the Phrygian mode that is used in O Vis Eternitatis. In medieval times no one though in terms of major or minor scales, rather they thought in terms of modes. One reason some of this music sounds exotic is because of the modes used. More about modes here.

Next blog I'll dip into the music of Guillaume de Machaut. Happy Listening!